On Monday, I got an email from FBI Director Andrew G. McCabe, and he was very concerned about me. Here’s what he had to say:
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATIONS (F.B.I)HEADQUARTERS WASHINGTON DC. FBI BUILDING 935 PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE, NW WASHINGTON, D.C. 20535-0001
Our Ref: CBN /0N8/CONTRACT NO.856.
To. Beneficiary:
This is Andrew G. McCabe FBI DIRECTOR, and we are here in Africa as an FBI/UNITED STATE delegate that have been delegated to investigate these fraudsters who are in the business of swindling Foreigners that came for transaction in Africa.
Please be informed that during our investigation,we found out that there is a total sum amount of money $12.5 million that has been assigned in your name as the beneficiary and these fraudsters are busy swindling you without any hope of receiving your fund.
These are the works of the fraud stars who needed to extort money from you in the name of this transfer.We have to inform you that we have made some arrested in respect of this delayed over due fund. I have a very limited time to stay in Africa here so I advise you urgently respond to this message .
These criminals will be caught unaware and we don't want them to know this new development to avoid jeopardizing our investigation,you need to cancel anything that has to do with this exercise to enable us get all the necessary information we required.
I shall be expecting your swift response as soon as you receive this email and notify us any message you receive from those fraudsters for us to investigate on it before you make any contact with them.
Regards,
FBI Andrew G. McCabe.
As an intellectual in full possession of her facilities, I didn’t buy the letter for a minute. Obviously, it’s a scam.
But as an editor, I’ll admit that I saw it as a challenge. A challenge to see if I could spruce it up and make it a bit less unbelievable. So here’s my edited version below:
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATIONS HEADQUARTERS, WASHINGTON DC. FBI BUILDING 935 PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE, NW WASHINGTON, D.C., 20535-0001
REF: CBN/0N8/CONTRACT NO. 856
Dear Ms. Jeannette E. H. DiLouie,
My name is Katarina Swift, administrative assistant to Andrew G. McCabe, FBI Director of Fraudulent International Interactions (Africa – SW Region).
Be advised: This is not a scam, and you do have personal funds at risk. You’ve been assigned $17.22 million as a beneficiary of Remto Inc., an account that is now under attack by Nigerian shell-company DaroDari, which was created to take advantage of such funds.
REPLY TO THIS EMAIL ONLY for further instructions on how to extract the remaining $16.99 million.
Regards,
Katarina Swift Administrative Assistant Federal Bureau of Investigation
Let’s face it: There’s no way you can completely clean up this scam letter. It’s atrocious from start to finish, beginning with its very premise.
At the same time, there are some glaringly bad areas that can be perked up easily enough.
For example, it’s called spellcheck, you buffoons. Spellcheck might not catch absolutely everything, but it would have recognized how there needed to be spaces added in “investigation,we”, “transfer.We” and “investigation,you.”
Come on now! Do you really think that FBI Director Andrew G. McCabe would miss such obvious errors?
Also, “fraudsters?” Who talks like that in America? Or England? Or any other English-speaking nation? Get an editor already, you dignity-less scamming scum.
And it also needs to be mentioned that an actual FBI director would never be sending you a letter in the first place, hence the reason why I changed the actual sender to his secretary – giving her a sexy-sounding name for kicks and giggles while I was at it.
Even with that change though, sexy-sounding FBI secretaries are going to be way too busy to send such long-winded emails, so I chopped it up significantly from 251 words to 118.
Much more realistic that way.
I also added in a personal greeting and other specifics to make it sound more legitimate, assured the recipient that this is definitely not a scam (you’d be surprised by how many people will fall for such a simple trick), and didn’t bother bragging about past or current successes.
The revised letter is straight to the point, rather like an actual anti-“fraudster” letter from the FBI…
If it sent them in the first place. Which, call me a naive little editor if you want, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't.